Sunday, 9 July 2017

Blueberry Picking + Gelato!!!

Yesterday, my friends and I went to pick blueberries! Originally, we wanted to go on this blueberry + onsen + gelato tour but they couldn't get enough people so they canceled. Luckily for us, we found a farm we could go to and decided to just go there ourselves.

The place was really very ulu though. It's pretty near the firefly place, but the farm requires you to turn into a very, very narrow road and we ended up missing it twice. We did find a number to call, so we managed to get there eventually.

It really is in the Japanese countryside. (Well, I suppose this applies to most of Sasebo but I'm still not very used to it)

To the blueberries!

There are basically two varieties of blueberries: Brightwell (I hope I'm transcribing to English correctly)

and Powder Blue.

I didn't really believe the lady when she said that they tasted different but I HAD TO EAT MY WORDS. Not only did the two varieties taste different, even the different tries within the varieties tasted different. So when we found a tree that we liked, we just stood there for a very, very long time.

Blueberry trees (bushes? Maybe I should just stick to 'plants') as far as the eye can see!

This is probably my favourite picture from the whole day:

And now for photos of the stars: the blueberries!

So there were white, red, and blue berries around but the only ones we could eat were the blue ones (and they had to be completely blue - no tinge or red or any of that) because the other two meant the berry wasn't ripe.

And I guess this is pretty obvious to everyone but I was quite surprised to see them (I was so obviously raised in a city).

And for some reasons, the blueberries started to look like grapes at times.

It was apparently 28.5 degrees in the greenhouse, but I honestly didn't feel the heat. It was actually pretty cooling.

The deal with the blueberry picking is that you can eat all the blueberries you want but you have to pay 350 yen for every 100g of blueberries that you bring home. I was aiming for 100g, but the first time I went to pay, I vastly underestimated the amount of berries I picked and only had 72g. I went back to get more and ended up with... 98g. So my friend gave me 1 berry and I managed to get exactly 100g which is probably the accomplishment of the day.

I also picked up a small bottle of blueberry juice! Gonna drink it sometime this week(:

And these are two more photos I took at the blueberry farm. In a very amazing coincidence, one of my friends from Kyudai actually visited this place last week!

After we finished stuffing ourselves with berries, we decided to... stuff ourselves with gelato. My friend had heard of this place called Milky Way Farm and since it was only a few minutes from the blueberries, we decided to head there.

Although I was probably more fascinated with the coin-operated rice-polishing station when we parked.

The place! Apparently, the gelato there is hand-made and it is definitely all very delicious!

The interior.

For some reason, they were also selling homemade saussage and I ended up buying one (the small one!) and I'll have to remember to cook it soon too.

The gelato! Mine is the ridiculously big one because I couldn't decide what flavour to get so I ended up getting FOUR. Obviously I couldn't finish it but I have no regrets. It was really good and at about 550 yen (can't remember the exact price and I can't remember if this is before or after they raised the price - there was a sign) it's actually pretty cheap.

From left to right: Belgium Chocolate, Milk, Chocolate Mint

Middle: Royal Milk Tea

All the flavours were really good and we were all really full. All in all, this was a really good day(: